Mesquite ISD students learn about Black history through new steel drum band elective
MESQUITE - A North Texas school system has a bright idea to make academics more diverse.
Mesquite ISD is offering a steel drum class as an elective for the first time this year.
It may sound like you're on a Caribbean Island, but the musicians are Poteet High School students like Lane Henexson.
"It's a lot of fun," Henexson said. "I really enjoy it, especially since it's my senior year, so I'm glad I get to do it before I head off. It was really cool learning about the culture and the carnivals and things they do with steel drums."
You wouldn't know from listening to them, but assistant band director Steve Kath formed the two steel drum bands just six weeks ago.
"We started rehearsing about the second week in January," Kath said. "It's something so different than what they're used to and what we would consider traditional instruments."
The notes inside the steel pan are in different places than the kids are normally used to. Some of the notes aren't even marked, but this Black History Month, the students are learning about more than just new notes.
"It was started on the island of Trinidad and Tobago," Kath said. "It was back during the slave trade and when Africans were brought over to the islands,"
The music became part of the resistance to slavery. Kath said Ellie Mannette is widely considered the feather of the modern steel drum.
"Steel drums began as an outlet for the enslaved Africans, and they first found anything they could play on around the islands in the late 1800s into the early 1900s," Kath said. "Once oil was discovered, that brought hundreds of unused oil barrels to the islands, and they learned that if they curved out a bowl, they could put notes on them to play the music that we have today."
Poteet High School junior Sophia Vidal enjoys learning about the history of another community of color.
"My mom is from Mexico, and my dad is from Columbia," Vidal said. "It's so good to be able to play something that comes from a deep part of our culture, even if it's not directly linked to us. It's more appreciation and more knowledge about everything."
The students have a deeper understanding of not only how to play the steel drums, but also the knowledge of how the music came from a dark part of history that's now moving forward on the right note.
